Thoughts of the new year

This photo reminds me of when we started The Kid at a preschool in Christchurch and his lunchbox was chosen as the "lunchbox of the week" due to our standard approach to feeding kids being stuff-it-full-with-fruit-and-veggies.

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On New Year's Eve it started raining heavily just before midnight and, man!, I was grateful for that. It meant that pretty much every partying bunch (who before that had been barbecuing in their gardens and making noise, which happy people generally do) gathered indoors instead and we managed to sleep blissfully through the change of the year without even hearing the fireworks. Yuss!

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Another pre-house-buying thought I keep playing with is... visitors.

The house we're buying has four bedrooms, which means that whilst we're renovating we can move people around, from room to room, until everything's done, without anyone having to live on top of anyone else's stuff.

After that, it means there's an extra room for people to stay over.

I'm excited both with the prospect of having friends visit and stay with us (Treena? Molly? Various visiting Estonians? Family from overseas?) but also... an au-pair maybe. A young person from overseas somewhere who can live with us and share in our lives, and who kids would probably love having around.

I mentioned it to The Man and he said 1) that he's also thought about it and 2) it'd be awesome.

I'm actually way excited about the idea. Don't know why, but it sounds awesome.

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On the weekend we had another brief Estonian visitor who, as is customary, the kids have been asking about for several days now.

It's fascinating that even when visitors come for a few hours, the kids will be saying, "Is Ene coming tomorrow? Krislin?" for a good long while afterwards. It may have to do with the fact that almost every visitor ends up bringing Estonian chocolate ;P, but it's also more than that, I think.